Philadelphia has plenty of primary-care providers overall, but there is far less access to care in communities with the highest concentrations of African American residents, according to a new study.
While the general findings were not a surprise - highly segregated black (and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic) areas were known to have fewer medical practitioners - the difference was bigger than the researchers had expected. The effect was independent of neighborhood poverty rates, which turned out to be less significant than anticipated, although it is not clear why.
The results pointed to the limitations even of sweeping legislation such as President Obama's Affordable Care Act, which led to unprecedented reductions in the number of people without insurance.
"It is great that you have more health insurance," said Mariana Chilton, a professor at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health who was not involved with the study, "but how does that help African American communities who don't have access" to doctors?
[For more of this story, written by Don Sapatkin, click here.]
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